Politics, popular culture and Reagan conservatism spewed maybe once a week...or less

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Public sector workers continue to 'phone it in.'

For all of you who receive money from the public as your sole source of earned income, I have a question for you: exactly how much of your daily efforts actually benefit the public?

We, the public, want to know.Since you are on our payroll, we expect results for our hard earned dollars that you are collecting.And if you are a member of a public sector union, this question is manifestly important.Your union organizers have a plan each and every year during contract negotiations with us, the public, to decrease your workload, increase your benefits and bullet proof your exposure to any pain during economic recessions.This bullet-proofing includes no lay-off provisions in addition to any salary, wage or benefit reductions for any reason.

Once your union has come away with guaranteed comfort for you in your working life, as well as your retirement (starting at age 52, perhaps), most of you public employees are feeling pretty good about life: guaranteed jobs for life, and no accountability for your job performance, since lay-offs are no longer on the table.Accordingly, why work very hard?There’s really no point to it, since it is irrelevant as to whether you perform well or not. If you excel at your job, there is no additional compensation to reward your efforts, since your union bosses have already carved in stone your wages, regardless of your performance, based on how long you’ve been sitting in your chair, merit be damned. There’s really no accounting for your performance, so why not just ‘phone it in,’ once you have secured your public service gig?

Public sector jobs are now the only available gig in the country that never have to cut back in hard times or do without when the economy turns south and in general share the pain of the rest of the population during hard times.You are exempt from all of that.And you never have to perform at even a modicum of decent output on the job.

In the private sector, the question is always on the table (whether it’s stated or implied): “just what have you done for us lately?”To sit on one’s laurels and coast works great in the short term, but once the boss walks in and asks this question, there better be some production in the ol’ hopper or you’ll be sacked like a bag of dirt quicker than you can say ‘where’s the unemployment office?’Every successful sales person who works in the private sector knows this.It doesn’t matter that they were ‘salesperson of the year’ last year, and got huge commissions to go along with their great sales production.The next year, they start out with zilch, zero nada on the books and have to produce, just like the next schmoe regardless of how great things went for them in the past.

But not public sector folks, no siree Bob.Once they get their foot in that door, it’s Fat City from that point on.Especially if they are a member of a union.Phoning it in is the way it’s done.No negative consequences for bad performance or even no performance.Just keep cashing those paychecks, courtesy of the tax money collected from us producers out here in the public.

And you would think that these folks on the public payrolls would be grateful.Nope, they are angry that they are now coming under scrutiny and demand that the rest of us just shut up and keep our wallets at the ready.See this for yourselves as those ingrates form mobs to yell down the legislators who want to change this unsustainable system in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Indiana.

We’ll see if this scrutiny as to exactly what we get from these parasitic public employees will change any behavior on the part of these blood suckers.I suspect not, not until we eliminate their unions and demand that these ingrates start to perform, with accountability for under performance, as well as rewarding superior performance.

Until that happens, these public sector slackers will continue to ‘phone it in.’

OK, I am a federal civil servant. Been at it for less than two years. I am a crew chief on the F-16 in a test and evaluation squadron at Edwards AFB CA. But you can be sure that all of us bust our humps in what we do. The newest jet we have was built in 1991! I usually am filthy, hot, sweaty and really damn tired. Sometimes with nicks and cuts still bleeding.And I do not belong to the union. I started this job at the age of 55 after being laid off in a corporate aircraft manufacturing plant in Wichita. I was out of work for eight months. And I had to have a kidney removed due to a cancerous tumor before hiring on.And I get minimum retirement starting two months after I hit sixty five.

BUT.... this 'minimum retirement' of yours is something that we still pay for, long after you have finished putting Band-Aids on your boo-boos, ORPO. Once you hit 65, you are out the door.

And say (God willing) that you hit 100 years old. That's 35 years of this minimum retirement of yours that all of us are paying for (in addition to all of those COLA increases, etc), although you have not lifted a finger to support one lousy F-16 do its job in all of those 35 years.

The system is broken horribly, and is unsustainable. Don't discount your 'minimum retirement' so easily. What happens to you when the US can no longer pay anybody's retirement? Including yours? Will you take up arms against the taxpayers who refuse to get milked any longer?

Gubmint workers are all movitivated by the same thing: justify their jobs by jacking up the numbers of those who depend on them, regardless of whether the end result benefits society at large.

When I was a SSG in the Army, I was ordered to take all the ammo we had in late September and fire it up: shoot every last round off, or we would end up with a surplus going into the next fiscal year starting in October. Incredible, enormous extravagent waste, I couldn't stand to watch it happen. But no other decision was possible, you see, since if we had extra, that meant that we clearly didn't need last year's allotment, and accordingly next year's would be adjusted downward.

No commander at any level wants to see less of anything, ever. And that thinking is rampant in every bureaucracy everywhere.